Soft Skills, Hard Benefits

Soft skills, hard benefits.Assessing the key predictors of successful hires.

Resign yourself to this reality.

Introduction

Want to hire a superstar? Good luck. Odds are you’ll fail. We’re sorry to have to present these painful truths, but facts are facts:

The numbers are absolute torture to anyone charged with finding and keeping talent.

* Source: “Hire for Attitude” Forbes, January 23, 2012† Source: “Hiring for attitude: Research & tools to skyrocket your success rate” Mark Murphy, Leadership IQ, 2012

Hiring well is hard.

Introduction

‘Soft skills’ are the hard part.

Introduction

Research has proven over and over again that proficiency in a short list of competency areas, which focus on soft skills, are the true predictors of success in almost every job.

How do you predict success?

Introduction

You know what could go wrong, right?

That person… He or she dressed perfectly. Great answers. Warm smile. Cool customer.

The candidate seemed so ideal for the job. Then, they accepted the offer. And joined the organization. And poisoned it.

Productivity suffered. Client relationships got rocky. Morale took a dive. The happy ending came when their employment finally ended.

Why couldn’t you see this coming?

The key to predicting future performance: past performance.

Introduction

ProfessionalismInterpersonal skillsProblem solving and adaptabilityPersonal value commitmentManaging othersLeadership

Professionalism

1— Professionalism tops the list of success predictors. Have we stated the obvious? Yes. Professionalism is the “price of entry” for most positions (unless you value unprofessional workers).

ProfessionalismInterpersonal skillsProblem solving and adaptabilityPersonal value commitmentManaging othersLeadership

Interpersonal skills

2— Can personality tests provide insights regarding a candidate’s interpersonal skills? Yes. Can they reveal how well the candidate worked in team situations in prior jobs? Not very well. You need a better source of data.

ProfessionalismInterpersonal skillsProblem solving and adaptabilityPersonal value commitmentManaging othersLeadership

Problem solving and adaptability

3— Problem solving and adaptability are also top predictors of success. Essentially, every job calls on some degree of problem solving; specifically, the employee’s ability to assess and analyze issues and identify solutions. What’s more, every job requires adaptability to changing conditions.

ProfessionalismInterpersonalskillsProblem solving & adaptabilityPersonal value commitmentManaging othersLeadership

Personal value commitment

4— As someone relied upon to evaluate and hire talent, you must assess a candidate’s personal values such as ethics and honesty (or lack of).

ProfessionalismInterpersonalskillsProblem solving& adaptabilityPersonal value commitment Managing othersLeadership

Managing others

5— A great number of positions demand management skills, and for many of those that don’t, you probably hope a new hire could be future management material.

ProfessionalismInterpersonalskillsProblem solving& adaptabilityPersonal valuecommitment Managing othersLeadership

Leadership

6— The truly high-profile jobs – where leadership is required – call for an even larger set of competencies. And predictability is often even more evasive.

The future of your organization depends upon assessing the past performance of your job candidates.

Conclusion

Conclusion

Traditional assessment and hiring techniques aren’t working. Organizations are still plagued by high turnover, mediocre performance, and hiring inefficiency.

A scientific assessment of past work performance is the single best predictor of future job success.

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